Monday, April 6, 2009

I'd like to invite and encourage all clinicians to register for the openEHR Foundation's new Clinical Knowledge Manager (CKM) - found online at www.openehr.org/knowledge.

CKM is an international repository for openEHR archetypes and has two primary purposes - that of archetype publication and archetype governance. It is a real opportunity for clinicians to collaborate and agree on clinical content definitions for publication and use in our electronic health records.

openEHR archetypes are open source, computable specifications that define clinical information about a single and discrete clinical concept. For example there are separate archetypes defining a 'symptom', 'diagnosis', 'blood pressure', 'medication order', and 'risk of disease based on family history'.

As structured and standardised definitions of clinical content, archetypes are increasingly being recognised as fundamental building blocks of electronic health records, especially when integrated with clinical terminologies such as SNOMED CT. If we all start to record information based on the same archetype, then we can meaningfully and unambiguously share health information between systems, and we start to query that information across systems.

A primary goal of CKM is to encourage a broad range of clinician input to make sure that the clinical content in each archetype is correct. Absolutely no openEHR experience is necessary to participate in CKM, although we anticipate you will learn about openEHR as part of the journey. All participation is purely on a volunteer basis, and you can opt out at any point.

Whilst CKM is still in its relatively early days, we are already seeing the benefits that contributions by grassroots clinicians are bringing to the archetypes currently undergoing team review. Technically oriented openEHR experts support the review process to provide guidance on design and implementation issues, so there are no unrealistic expectations of the clinicians. Contributions of clinical and technical nature are equally and gratefully received;-)By design, each archetype contains all the relevant information about the specific clinical concept - a maximal dataset which can be used in all clinical scenarios. So, for each archetype we are seeking a range of views from a variety of:

- professions - including every type of clinicial expert;- geographical locations - to make sure we can capture diverse clinical and cultural practice; and - knowledge domains - from general healthcare to all specialist areas.

Please actively 'adopt' the archetypes that you would like to be involved in. This will ensure that you will be invited to participate in the review of archetypes that are of interest to you. At other times you may also be invited to participate in a review where we consider that your expertise might provide balance out the current team of reviewers.

While we will strive to achieve maximal datasets for each archetype, we are pragmatic and know that we won't get it 100% right - certainly not at first try. However, I suggest that a small group of 3-4 clinicians with complementary skills and appropriate expertise can create and develop a draft archetype to approximately 80-85% complete. Further review within CKM by a team of clinicians from a range of professions, countries, institutions, research, and health domains will contribute and refine the archetype further - maybe this still will only get it to 90% complete; but maybe much more. Our experience to date shows that maximal datasets are much easier to agree on than minimal datasets!!

Over time it will be interesting to see how the models evolve - no doubt a good research topic!

Obtaining agreement on clinical content within archetypes in this manner is a significant achievement, even if in retrospect we find they are not 100% complete at the start. The flow-on benefits that come from sharing a standardised set of clinical specifications for EHRs can potentially transform some eHealth initiatives and is a necessary foundation for the truly sharable electronic health record.

So, all clinicians are welcome to get involved in CKM - we will certainly set you to work very quickly! We expect that by contributing domain expertise and insights, clinicians will also benefit personally by gradually developing openEHR understanding and expertise as part of the experience.

And then of course, there is also the contribution to the good of mankind... ;-)

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

It's only vaguely health-related, but I wonder what the evidence says about tanning online? www.computertan.com offers you a five minute free trial and includes a mobile app for your iPhone. I have no idea if this is less or more likely to cause skin damage, but it will help me look good and feel less pasty.

Disclosures and Disclaimers

Disclosures

My employer is compensated through funding to provide analytical research, technology solutions, and Web-based public and private health care performance reports by the State of New York, the State of Illinois, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Commonwealth Fund and Bridges to Excellence. I am not being compensated by any of these organisations to create articles for or make edits to this Web site or any other medium; and all posts authored by me are as an individual and do not represent my employer or the agencies I work for.